The battle is over. However you feel about the results, now is the time to raise up the new Speaker in prayer.
From The Wall Street Journal. Shortly after 2 a.m. Saturday morning, Kevin McCarthy finally saw the sign he had been waiting for his entire political career. Hung above an office on the second floor of the U.S. Capitol were the words: “SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE KEVIN MCCARTHY.”
“Oh yes!” he exclaimed, before asking someone standing nearby to snap a picture. “Sweet! See that?” he said to the crush of reporters gathered around him. “It was worth the wait.”
The House of Representatives elected Mr. McCarthy speaker early Saturday morning after a grueling 15 rounds of voting that turned a general formality into a slog stretched over four days. It marked the first time in 100 years that the speaker wasn’t chosen on the first vote, and the number of ballots it took was the most of any election since before the Civil War. The votes were punctuated by extraordinary scenes rarely witnessed in the usually highly choreographed deliberations of Congress.
The week saw Mr. McCarthy capitulate to nearly every demand made by 20 Republican members from his party’s right flank, including one critical rule change that will make it easier for those members to topple him if they are unhappy. It also put on display the respect he has from his backers, with routine standing ovations every time he voted for himself, even as vote after vote failed.
To win the job, Mr. McCarthy agreed to restore a rule allowing a single member to call a snap vote on ousting the speaker. The concessions also include commitments to tie spending cuts to a debt-ceiling increase and to a process making it easier to amend individual spending bills, according to several negotiators and people familiar with the talks. And they include a goal of putting more members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus on key committees, including the Rules Committee, which for years has written rules to block amendments from coming up on the House floor.
“I ran out of things to ask for,” Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida told reporters after he, along with the other five remaining detractors, voted “present” rather than against Mr. McCarthy on the 15th and final ballot. The move lowered the threshold required for Mr. McCarthy to be elected, capturing the speakership with 216 votes, rather than the 218 normally required.
Some of Mr. McCarthy’s allies lamented that his concessions gave away too much of his power and will make it harder for him to govern the House’s fractious GOP caucus.
The decision for Mr. McCarthy’s final six detractors to vote “present” in a bloc came after a blockbuster series of events unfolded on the House floor late Friday night into the early hours of Saturday morning. …
The concessions Mr. McCarthy made to secure the speakership could cause friction with the party’s center flank. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, a McCarthy ally who works across the aisle, said she was “not OK” with some decisions that had been made, though it didn’t change her vote for Mr. McCarthy.
Mr. McCarthy has long known he was stepping into a difficult job.
In February of last year, as he was planning for this eventual moment, he told the Journal in an interview: “It’s Republican nature that they want to take down their leaders. It’s just what they do.”
What do you think of McCarthy’s victory and the concessions he made? Share your thoughts and prayers below.
(Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal. Photo Credit: Getty Images)